2011: Year of the Tornado

The year 2011 will forever be known as Year of the Tornado in the U.S. A series of violent severe storms swept across the Plains and Southeast U.S., bringing an astonishing six billion-dollar disasters in a three-month period. The epic tornado onslaught killed 552 people and caused $25 billion in damage. Three of the five largest tornado outbreaks on record hit in a six-week period, including the largest and most expensive tornado outbreak in U.S. history--the $10.2 billion dollar Southeast U.S. Super Outbreak, April 25 - 28. Even more stunning was the $9 billion late-May tornado outbreak that brought an EF-5 tornado to Joplin, Missouri. The Joplin tornado did $3 billion in damage and killed 158 people--the largest death toll from a U.S. tornado since 1947, seventh deadliest tornado in U.S. history, and the most expensive tornado in world history. In a year of amazing weather extremes, this year's tornado season ranks as the top U.S. weather story of 2011.

Video 1. Remarkable video of the tornado that hit Tuscaloosa, Alabama on April 27, 2011. Fast forward to minute four to see the worst of the storm.

Figure 1. A truly frightening radar image: multiple hook echoes from at least ten supercell thunderstorms cover Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee during the height of the April 27, 2011 Super Outbreak. A multi-hour animation is available here.

A record six EF-5 tornadoes confirmed in 2011Six top-end EF-5 tornadoes hit the U.S. in 2011, tying this year with 1974 for the greatest number of these most destructive tornadoes. The EF-5 tornadoes of 2011:

Figure 3. EF-5 damage from the April 27, 2011 Neshoba tornado in Mississippi. The tornado was so powerful that it dug out the ground to a depth of two feet over an area 25 - 50 yards wide and several hundred yards long. Image credit: NWS.

- The tornado death toll of 552 in 2011 ties 1936 as the second deadliest year for tornadoes in U.S. history. Only 1925, with 794 fatalities, was deadlier. In 1936, violent tornadoes hit Tupelo Mississippi (216 killed), and Gainesville, Georgia (203 killed.) During the 1930s, the tornado death rate per million people was 60 - 70 times as great as in the year 2000 (Figure 4), implying that this year's tornadoes may have killed tens of thousands of people if we did not have our modern tornado modern warning system.

Figure 4. Death rate per million people per year in U.S., 1875-2011. Thin line with dots is raw rate, curved thick line is death rate, filtered by 3-point median and 5-point running mean filter, and straight solid lines are least squares fit to filtered death rate for 1875-1925 and 1925-2011. Dashed lines are estimates of 10th and 90th percentile death rates from 1925-2000. The death rate fell from 8 per million to .12 per million between 1940 and 2010. Image credit: A Brief History of Deaths from Tornadoes in the United States, Harold Brooks and Charles Doswell III, and updated by Harold Brooks in 2011.

- April 2011 had the most tornadoes of any month in U.S. history--753. The previous record was 542, set in May 2003. The previous busiest April was in 1974, with 267 tornadoes. The average number of tornadoes for the month of April during the past decade was 161, and the 30-year average for April tornadoes was 135.

- On April 27, 199 confirmed tornadoes touched down. This is the largest 1-day tornado total on record, beating the 148 recorded in 24 hours on April 3 - 4, 1974.

The year 2011 now has three of the top five tornado outbreaks on record (note, though, that reliable records for number of tornadoes only extend back in time to about the early 1990s):

- The April 25 - 28, 2011 Super tornado outbreak, with 343 tornadoes, is now the largest tornado outbreak in U.S. history. The previous record (3 days or less duration) was 148 tornadoes, set during the April 3 - 4, 1974 Super Outbreak.

- The April 14 - 16, 2011 tornado outbreak, with 177 confirmed tornadoes, ranks as the second largest tornado outbreak of three days or less duration on record, and 5th largest outbreak of six or fewer days duration.

- The May 22, 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado killed 158 people and injured 1150, making it the deadliest U.S. tornado since 1947, and 7th deadliest in history. The $3 billion estimate of insured damage makes it the most expensive tornado in world history.

- Preliminary damage estimates from Munich Re insurance company put 2011's insured losses due to U.S. thunderstorms and tornadoes at $25 billion, more than double the previous record set in 2010.

- The year 2011 now ranks in 2nd place behind 1973 for greatest number of tornadoes greater than EF-0 strength (EF-1, EF-2, EF-3, EF-4 and EF-5 strength, Figure 5.)

Figure 5. Number of EF-1, EF-2, EF-3, EF-4 and EF-5 tornadoes from 1950 to 2011. The total shown for 2011 is preliminary and uses unofficial numbers through November 17, but 2011 now ranks in 2nd place behind 1973. There is not a decades-long increasing trend in the numbers of tornadoes stronger than EF-0, implying that climate change, as yet, is not having a noticeable impact on U.S. tornadoes. However, statistics of tornado frequency and intensity are highly uncertain. Major changes in the rating process occurred in the mid-1970s (when all tornadoes occurring prior to about 1975 were retrospectively rated), and again in 2001, when scientists began rating tornadoes lower because of engineering concerns and unintended consequences of National Weather Service policy changes. Also, beginning in 2007, NOAA switched from the F-scale to the EF-scale for rating tornado damage, causing additional problems with attempting to assess if tornadoes are changing over time. Data provided by Harold Brooks, NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory.

My husband and I were visiting my parents in Birmingham, Alabama. We decided to take a day trip to Tuscaloosa to see the damage from the April 27 tornado. It was a sight that I will never forget. Blocks and blocks of flattened houses and stores. This area has not been touched in 2 months. It was so moving that I started to cry thinking of all these poor people.

You are correct. Any member who signed up agreed to the terms and conditions. I believe that "linking" to a commercial weather site is prohibited. I accept that this is the rule; however, if I mention that I saw a posting of value on the bunker site in a WU mail to another WU member, this is not linking for promotional purposes. Yet, my email is changed. Not only is it changed on the recipient's end, it is also changed in my "sent" box, as though I actually typed the "changed" words. This practice, I believe, would be beyond questionable.

Also, of note.....the rule regarding linking to commercial sites is not applied to any other websites that I tested, except for .com ( this is the Bunker site I have typed, in case it is changed). I tested the following in my own WU mail account. Within the account it changes the Bunker site to wunderground.com....here is this blog comment, I believe it will change it to just ".com"

wunderground.com.com----->this is the Bunker websiteweather.comaccuweather.comthextremeweather.com

These were just a few that I tested, but it was enough to determine that this is not a "rule" that is being enforced, but IS an attempt to restrict a member's ability to share information.

And, in the much used "community standards", we find this:

"...Linking to External Sites

Generally, links to non-commercial (that is, personal) weather sites, personal sites/blogs, and especially photographers' site (even commercial) are allowed. If sites are found to contain information or discussion that goes beyond our own rules or is found to be abusive it will be removed..."

Again, the issue here is not privacy, but the fact that words that you type with your fingers are altered without your knowledge before they reach the intended recipient. And you have no idea what the recipeient actually received. This sets a very disturbing precedent.

A bad precedent indeed. That same rule that gives WU the right to edit your private e-mail also gives them the right to edit the public posts you make, potentially changing your point of view 180 degrees. Bad precedent indeed. Better to just remove the e-mail, or dare I say remove the post.

Quoting pottery:It's an interesting debate, right now.With the Internet making it possible for everyone to have a say in everything, even copyright and private statements are subject to abuse.

And there is a huge grey area between what I might consider private, and what you might consider your 'right' to know.I think that we will see "censorship" as we know it (being the assumed right of a person to remain private) coming to an end.

I personally cannot think of this as anything but intrusion and noseyness .But with the popularity of "Reality" TV being a good example (our desire to witness the mindless goings-on of complete strangers, and worse, believing it!!!), I think that we are witnessing the end of Individualism and with it the end of Mental Progress.

We are evolving into a sort of Group-Brain entity.There is a forum for every thought we have.We can join that forum for reinforcement of our views, or to diss the opposite view.It's a basic requirement of Homo Sapiens to belong to a tribe, party, religion or whatever.It's also a very natural thing for the members of that 'tribe' to prevent outsiders from coming in, especially if they are brandishing new ideas.

Nothing has changed really.There will always be people who will question the Status Quo, and these people are often feared and mistrusted because they create doubts in the minds of "comfortable" folk.

Your Constitution was penned many years ago.Aspects of it have been changed to take into account the changes within your Society.It is a 'work-in-progress', as it should be. And if it was not so it would have failed.It's a mistake to think that all change is bad.

You made some good points there Pottery. Change is inevitable, but I find some of it hard to deal with, as you know.

I guess I am a little out of touch as I don't often have much time to come here. Maybe this blog has degraded. I hope Levi32 is still around come hurricane season. I did not realize a weather blog war was going on!

Quoting BtnTx:I totally agree the wx-related info here is the best because of highly informed members who comment and often including great links!

I think the weather part has been going downhill for 2-3 years. MOST of the best amateur/pro mets have given up. What's left is a shell of what it was. But worst of all, the Dr., who I respect for his science and his tropical cyclone forecasting, sort of phoned it in this year on the tropical cyclone part. Many posts were 98% re-run with a new paragraph at the top. I always used to count on what the NHC said first, and the Dr. second. This year, I had to look elsewhere..As for the blog comment part..that's a mess. Been going downhill since the /- system started. We'll see what next year's season brings..Good health to all.

I am RAH-DAY for the cold next week.Finally some real cold after dealing with these sissy cold temps that have been hanging around since November.Come on old man winter let's GET IT ON!!!.(aaaaand for those of you who are thinking negativly you need to stop :).

Quoting BahaHurican: I'm one of those who has been around for a long time, and I gotta tell you the only really worse thing about the "badness" of this blog is the volume. I don't think the ratio of troll to regular blogger has changed much. Attacks were just as mean and persistent. In some ways the blog is better for the controls that have been added, though like a lot of other things in life they are capable of being abused. What matters most to me is the quality of wx-related blogging that happens here, and while members have come and gone and grown up, that aspect of this blog continues to be pretty impressive.

I totally agree the wx-related info here is the best because of highly informed members who comment and often including great links!

Again, the issue here is not privacy, but the fact that words that you type with your fingers are altered without your knowledge before they reach the intended recipient. And you have no idea what the recipeient actually received. This sets a very disturbing precedent.

Quoting pottery:I never really thought of the e-mail feature on this blog to be private.It is, and has always been, a service provided by Wunderground, with CONDITIONS ATTACHED.

In fact, my last post deals with some of that, i.e., I dont think that ANYTHING is private anymore.

And like you, I am horrified at that. So I deal with it however I can.

Again, the issue here is not privacy, but the fact that words that you type with your fingers are altered without your knowledge before they reach the intended recipient. And you have no idea what the recipeient actually received. This sets a very disturbing precedent.

True. But I don't think the framers of the Constitution imagined a company censoring people for speaking their mind....

You can say what you want, but this is not a public forum. It is privately owned. There are other options for you to exercise your right to free speech. So kwitcher whining.

There is a difference between Accuweather, etc. and The Folks Who Shall Not Be Named, by the way. People promoting Accuweather do not come on this blog to harass and defame or to promote their own site. Accuweather and their representatives display class and respectability. There has never been a need to add "Accuweather" to the list of words that are automatically censored. There are other character strings that are probably censored automatically as well, but I have never seen it happen because I have never had a reason to try posting them on here.

Quoting BahaHurican: I'm one of those who has been around for a long time, and I gotta tell you the only really worse thing about the "badness" of this blog is the volume. I don't think the ratio of troll to regular blogger has changed much. Attacks were just as mean and persistent. In some ways the blog is better for the controls that have been added, though like a lot of other things in life they are capable of being abused. What matters most to me is the quality of wx-related blogging that happens here, and while members have come and gone and grown up, that aspect of this blog continues to be pretty impressive.

I would think if someone is going to intentionally change the wording of an email a user sends through WU, then the sender should be warned before hand. Anyway you cut it - if you are going to change the wording in a WU email, then it's not private anymore.Furthermore, if admin can change one word in an email, then they can change many words in an email. So, next time you receive a WU mail notification - just ask yourself are those really the words the sender wrote?

What is questionable is all the hacking & mailbombs that went off when the bunk propaganda began. For the love of stop spamming us here & in our wundermail while attacking WU & it's members in every way possible.. Your bunk may have swayed & manipulated some of my friends away but there is no place for my weather station, webcams~ bunk's idea of weather toys is redirecting you to The Weather Channel, news is past a month stale, have to be a member to view blogs..& y'all complain about admin here..get a decent dev or three. What is being done there could, for the most part, be done in your blogs here except a few that have intentionally burnt bridges with admin here as martyrs in the plot.. wouldn't be pulling a profit.

caperes2011~ run so many people off? WU traffic is higher this time of year than last & the weather isn't 1/2 as bad..visitors by the millions, daily..why can't I even find site stats on bunk? I'm not a member so I wouldn't know..has it become so popular spammers for other sites are trying to sway bunk's members?

What a great post! I believe this blog has gotten much better lately. Every now and then a troll may appear but overall this place has been relatively peacefull.

Sorry Pottery...do you think changing the content of private email it responsible??? If so, there are a number of countries that would love to have you...by the way you are one I've always liked...but in this case this just isn't right and I don't think anyone can really defend it...

I never really thought of the e-mail feature on this blog to be private.It is, and has always been, a service provided by Wunderground, with CONDITIONS ATTACHED.

In fact, my last post deals with some of that, i.e., I dont think that ANYTHING is private anymore.

And like you, I am horrified at that. So I deal with it however I can.

Quoting yqt1001:Nostalgia dominates people's opinions. Old members nearly always look back at the old times and say "those were great times"/"those were better times" no matter how bad it was.

I'm one of those who has been around for a long time, and I gotta tell you the only really worse thing about the "badness" of this blog is the volume. I don't think the ratio of troll to regular blogger has changed much. Attacks were just as mean and persistent. In some ways the blog is better for the controls that have been added, though like a lot of other things in life they are capable of being abused. What matters most to me is the quality of wx-related blogging that happens here, and while members have come and gone and grown up, that aspect of this blog continues to be pretty impressive.

What is questionable is all the hacking & mailbombs that went off when the bunk propaganda began. For the love of stop spamming us here & in our wundermail while attacking WU & it's members in every way possible.. Your bunk may have swayed & manipulated some of my friends away but there is no place for my weather station, webcams~ bunk's idea of weather toys is redirecting you to The Weather Channel, news is past a month stale, have to be a member to view blogs..& y'all complain about admin here..get a decent dev or three. What is being done there could, for the most part, be done in your blogs here except a few that have intentionally burnt bridges with admin here as martyrs in the plot.. wouldn't be pulling a profit.

caperes2011~ run so many people off? WU traffic is higher this time of year than last & the weather isn't 1/2 as bad..visitors by the millions, daily..why can't I even find site stats on bunk? I'm not a member so I wouldn't know..has it become so popular spammers for other sites are trying to sway bunk's members?

True. But I don't think the framers of the Constitution imagined a company censoring people for speaking their mind....

It's an interesting debate, right now.With the Internet making it possible for everyone to have a say in everything, even copyright and private statements are subject to abuse.

And there is a huge grey area between what I might consider private, and what you might consider your 'right' to know.I think that we will see "censorship" as we know it (being the assumed right of a person to remain private) coming to an end.

I personally cannot think of this as anything but intrusion and noseyness . But with the popularity of "Reality" TV being a good example (our desire to witness the mindless goings-on of complete strangers, and worse, believing it!!!), I think that we are witnessing the end of Individualism and with it the end of Mental Progress.

We are evolving into a sort of Group-Brain entity.There is a forum for every thought we have.We can join that forum for reinforcement of our views, or to diss the opposite view.It's a basic requirement of Homo Sapiens to belong to a tribe, party, religion or whatever.It's also a very natural thing for the members of that 'tribe' to prevent outsiders from coming in, especially if they are brandishing new ideas.

Nothing has changed really.There will always be people who will question the Status Quo, and these people are often feared and mistrusted because they create doubts in the minds of "comfortable" folk.

Your Constitution was penned many years ago.Aspects of it have been changed to take into account the changes within your Society.It is a 'work-in-progress', as it should be. And if it was not so it would have failed.It's a mistake to think that all change is bad.

CHENNAI (AlertNet) - Lashing rains and gale force winds bore down on India's southeastern coast on Friday, disrupting power supplies and communication lines as Cyclone Thane landfall near the industrial city of Chennai, officials and witnesses said.

Packing wind speeds of up to 125 kmph (77 mph) and accompanied by tidal surges of up to 1.5 meters (5 feet), Thane hit Tamil Nadu state, close to the former French colonial town of Pondicherry on Friday morning, as coastal villagers moved to relief shelters.

"Under the influence of this system, rainfall at most places with heavy to very heavy falls at a few places and isolated extremely heavy falls would occur," said the Indian Meteorological Department in its latest bulletin.

"Gale winds speed reaching 120-130 kmph gusting to 145 kmph is likely along and off north Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry coasts during next 3 hours and then decrease gradually."

Witnesses in Chennai and Pondicherry said trees had been toppled and there had been power outages throughout the night and disruptions in phone and Internet services in some areas.

There have been no reports of casualties.

Hundreds of people from fishing communities along north Tamil Nadu's coast, and neighboring Andhra Pradesh state, have moved to schools set up as relief centers until the weather system passes.

India's cyclone season generally lasts from April to December with severe storms often causing dozens of deaths, evacuations of tens of thousands of people from low-lying villages and widespread crop and property damage.

In 1999, a "super-cyclone" battered the coast of the eastern state of Orissa for 30 hours with wind speeds reaching 300 kph (186 mph). It killed 10,000 people. ,,,,,,,,,30 hours and 186 mph..wow.

Chennai, Dec 30 (IANS) At least 33 people were killed as cyclone Thane, with a wind speed of 140 kmph, hit the Tamil Nadu coast near Cuddalore Friday morning, leaving a trail of death and destruction in the state and Puducherry, officials said. The cyclone did not have much impact on Andhra Pradesh coastline.

The total number of deaths in Tamil Nadu is 26 and seven in Puducherry, caused by electrocution, falling of tree or roof or walls.

There were no reports of any casulaties in Andhra Pradesh, with the cyclone only uprooting trees, and damaging roads and crops in a few areas in East Godavari and Chittoor district.

In Tamil Nadu, the coastal Cuddalore district reported 21 deaths while the others deaths were from Villupuram (2), Tiruvallur (2) and Chennai (1).

Standing paddy crops on around 25,000 acres of land in the Cauvery delta region is estimated to have been damaged due the high speed cyclonic wind.

Thousands of people reached relief camps in Cuddalore as the strong wind blew off the thatched roofs of houses.

A Korean cargo ship OSM Arena anchored out in the sea started drifting towards Chennai shore due to the strong current and wind. The ship is now standing at a safe distance and steps to tow the vessel to safer waters will be taken Saturday.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and Puducherry Chief Minister N. Rangasamy held emergency meetings with their officials to take stock of the situation and take out relief measures.

Jayalalithaa announced a solatium of Rs.200,000 to the families of the dead and released Rs.150 crore for relief and reconstruction of damaged infrastructure.

'District collectors, department heads and secretaries have been ordered to estimate the damages and submit it to the government,' she said, in a statement.

Teams from the National Disaster Management Force have been sent to Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Chennai and Tiruvallur.

In Chennai, people in low-lying areas were shifted to relief centres and food packets were distributed. Police banned public from venturing out onto the Marina beach as sea waters entered inland, around 500 metres from the shoreline.

Boats and nets of fishermen were sucked into the sea due to high tides.

The sea was rough and inundated some residential areas along the East Coast Road connecting Chennai and Puducherry.

Southern Railways rescheduled two trains, cancelled five and diverted five that reach or leave Chennai.

In Puducherry, power was switched off since 11 p.m. Thursday night as a precaution.

'We don't know what is happening in the outside world. All that we hear is the howling of wind. Many trees have fallen down. Even mobile phone signals are not proper,' Puducherry resident S. Ravikumar told IANS.

'We don't know when the power supply would be resumed. It is going to be a dark New Year for us,' he said.

In Andhra, Disaster Management Commissioner T. Radha said the cyclone had not caused much damage due to the huge distance between the Andhra coast and the area where it made the landfall.

'There are no reports of any loss of life or property due to the cyclone,' he said.

He said since there was no major threat, people were not evacuated from coastal villages or low-lying areas in any district.

The Met Office has also withdrawn the cyclone warning at the ports and for the fishermen along the coast.

However, as rains are predicted over next 24 hours, the officials in south coastal and Rayalaseema regions remained on alert.

There were reports of strong gales uprooting trees and damaging salt farms in the coastal villages in East Godavari district.

Chittoor, Tirupati and other towns in Chittoor district received heavy rains. The roads leading to the famous town at Tirumala were deserted.

Quoting pottery:There is an implied "RESPONSIBILITY'' that goes with that.

Sorry Pottery...do you think changing the content of private email it responsible??? If so, there are a number of countries that would love to have you...by the way you are one I've always liked...but in this case this just isn't right and I don't think anyone can really defend it...

Quoting Barefootontherocks:530. @Sangria,FYI. Back in the early days of these blogs, 2005, members were not allowed to link to or post graphics from accuweather. True story. Perhaps you are familiar with the Latin phrase "persona non grata."

Plain English from the Weather Underground terms and conditions:9. UNAUTHORIZED USE/NO INTERFERENCE. You agree that you will not use or attempt to use any method, device, software or routine to harm others or interfere with functioning of the Site or use and/or monitor any information in or related to the Site for any unauthorized purpose. Specifically, each Participant, whether authorized or unauthorized, agrees that it will not (and will not permit any of its employees, agents, and any other third party) do any of the following:

* Upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Data or content on the Site as to which you do not possess all of the patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, license or other rights to do so; * Violate any applicable laws and regulations, whether federal, state, local, foreign or international, applicable to the Site, its Data and/or your use of either, including without limitation U.S. export and re-export control laws and regulations, and you will not otherwise engage in any illegal, manipulative or misleading activity through use of this Site or its Data; * Use this Site or the Data or provide, link, or otherwise make available, any information on the Site that is unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another.s privacy, hateful, harmful to minors or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; * Impersonate any person or entity, or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation; * Manipulate, forge, or otherwise modify information or identifiers in a manner which may hide or disguise the origin of any information; * Upload, post, email, transmit, link to or otherwise make available any information on the Site that infringes any intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights of others, or that contains any virus, computer code, file, or other material which has as its intended purpose, the interruption, destruction, or loss of functionality of any computer software, Data, hardware, telecommunications equipment, or communications ability; * Attempt to gain access to confidential information to which you are not entitled; * Modify, reverse engineer, reverse assemble, decompile or hack into any of the software applications or related tools or utilities used by this Site; * Alter or delete information not provided by you, or interfere with the operation of this Site including, but not limited to, by distribution of unsolicited advertising or mail messages or propagation of worms, viruses and the like. * By providing Data or material, you also agree to be solely liable for any damage resulting from any infringement of copyrights, proprietary rights, or any other harm resulting from such a submission. Subject to WUI's policies regarding privacy, all e-mails, messages, postings, ideas, suggestions, concepts or other ideas or materials submitted will be treated as non-confidential and non-proprietary and may be used freely thereafter by WUI for any purposes it deems appropriate including commercial gain. By submitting information to WUI, you automatically grant, or warrant that the owner of such material has expressly granted WUI a royalty-free, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, display, translate and distribute such material (in whole or in part) and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed. You also agree to permit any other user of the Site to access, view, download or reproduce the material for any use permitted by the Site. You grant WUI the right to edit, copy, display, publish and distribute any information or material made available on the Site by you.

@SPL (added for clarity if this comment is quoted)Nothing insane about it. Trust me, admin here knows what (edit to singular) it is doing.

I could have sworn there was something in the United States called FREE SPEECH!

Agreed. I like to avoid conflict. When I've been in conflict before it was generally in defense of people here. I have defended Dr. M and other prominent posters many times and I still have a lot of respect for many people. But why would someone change the content of private emails without the sender's knowledge? That is creepy and unacceptable. And that applies regardless of where you want to spend your time. I spent a lot of hours here, I've contributed to charities, and I've admired a lot of people, a number of whom are still here. I still like to read and evaluate data on GW...I think Dr. M has a right to use his own blog as a forum for that. What really bothers me is the alteration of private emails without even notifying the sender. That crosses the line in my book, even if it's legal.